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The Power of Sympathy / The Coquette
Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, The Power of Sympathy (1789) and The Coquette (1797) were two of the earliest novels published in America. William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy reflects eighteenth-century America's preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the country's morality. A novel about the dangers of succumbing to sexual temptations and the rewards of resistance, it was meant to promote women's moral rectitude, and the letters through which the story is told are filled with advice on the proper relationships between the sexes. Like The Power of Sympathy, Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette is concerned with womanly virtue. Eliza Wharton is eager to enjoy a bit of freedom before settling down to domestic life and begins a flirtation with the handsome, rakish Sanford. Their letters trace their relationship from its romantic beginnings to the transgression that inevitably brings their exclusion from proper society. In her Introduction, Carla Mulford discusses the novels' importance in the development of American literature and as vivid reflections of the goal to establish a secure republic built on the virtue of its citizens.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
William Hill Brown
26 books3 followersWilliam Hill Brown was an American novelist, the author of what is usually considered the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789) and "Harriot, Or The Domestick Reconciliation" as well as the serial essay "The Reformer" published in Isaiah Thomas' Massachusetts Magazine. In both, Brown proves an extensive knowledge of European literature for example of Clarissa by Samuel Richardson but tries to lift the American literature from the British corpus by the choice of an American setting.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
November 17, 2009
This marks my having finished The Power of Sympathy, but no having read The Coquette. We read this for Colonial American Literature, and my professor came into class excited to lecture about this book and about (the television version of) "Gossip Girl"--most specifically the scandal surrounding "Gossip Girl"'s threesome in a recent episode. It was actually a really great way to connect the two, as the books mentioned in the novel function much in the same way parents' groups claim "Gossip Girl" to as a television show. I also just loved the epistolary format and the hilarity regarding their attitudes on girls and reading. And the drama! Oh, the hazards of love.
September 10, 2019
Only read The Power of Sympathy since it was a required read for school. Really enjoyed the format of the story because it was characters exchanging letters to each other. Will come back and read The Coquette soon.
May 21, 2017
Read it for "The Coquette." Chuck "The Power of Sympathy."
"The Power of Sympathy" was utterly tedious. It is basically a moralistic lecture thinly disguised as an epistolary novel. The characters, who are barely differentiated, wax poetic at length about how literature read for pleasure can corrupt young girls and how they should take care to only read things that will contribute to their moral growth. This is clearly the author's voice coming through, and this "novel" seems a transparent attempt to get his pedantic lectures to appeal to youth. I have no idea whether this weak attempt at literature was appealing then, but it certainly is not now. I will give it this, though: it did have a surprise twist that I did not see coming, but that twist was the only interesting part of the story.
"The Coquette," on the other hand, was a quick-paced and entertaining read. The main character, Eliza, was surprisingly complex and relateable, which made the story feel rather subversive, perhaps more so than intended by the author. Eliza expresses strident criticism of the institution of marriage and sets her intention to play the field for as long as she can to avoid the dull future that marriage ensures. This sets the tension for the story as she tries to balance her own desires against societal expectations and her sense of duty. But what makes the story especially interesting is that it is not just a woman's conflict against society; she is also at conflict with herself, torn between her rational mind and her emotional mind, between instant gratification and long-term outcomes. I think many a modern person can relate to her feeling torn between the decent yet dull man she knows to be the better match and the more exciting man whom she knows is the inferior choice but who responds to a more primal longing. Eliza is also an excellent representation of how one can deceive oneself when viewing a person through the lens of infatuation. So while the time period and courtship rituals contained in this novel are long past, the content is still completely relevant today.
"The Power of Sympathy" was utterly tedious. It is basically a moralistic lecture thinly disguised as an epistolary novel. The characters, who are barely differentiated, wax poetic at length about how literature read for pleasure can corrupt young girls and how they should take care to only read things that will contribute to their moral growth. This is clearly the author's voice coming through, and this "novel" seems a transparent attempt to get his pedantic lectures to appeal to youth. I have no idea whether this weak attempt at literature was appealing then, but it certainly is not now. I will give it this, though: it did have a surprise twist that I did not see coming, but that twist was the only interesting part of the story.
"The Coquette," on the other hand, was a quick-paced and entertaining read. The main character, Eliza, was surprisingly complex and relateable, which made the story feel rather subversive, perhaps more so than intended by the author. Eliza expresses strident criticism of the institution of marriage and sets her intention to play the field for as long as she can to avoid the dull future that marriage ensures. This sets the tension for the story as she tries to balance her own desires against societal expectations and her sense of duty. But what makes the story especially interesting is that it is not just a woman's conflict against society; she is also at conflict with herself, torn between her rational mind and her emotional mind, between instant gratification and long-term outcomes. I think many a modern person can relate to her feeling torn between the decent yet dull man she knows to be the better match and the more exciting man whom she knows is the inferior choice but who responds to a more primal longing. Eliza is also an excellent representation of how one can deceive oneself when viewing a person through the lens of infatuation. So while the time period and courtship rituals contained in this novel are long past, the content is still completely relevant today.
September 6, 2026
A two-fer. This volume contains two examples of early Post-Colonial American literature from the late 18th Century. I was curious about works of fiction from this time period because, as far as I remember, I never read any novels or fiction from it, so I did some research to find good examples. These two were often cited. Seemed like an overlooked era to me. "The Power of Sympathy" (1789, William Hill Brown) is one of the works that some call the first American novel. "The Coquette" (1797, Hannah Webster Foster) was a best-seller.
The two works are similarly epistolary, a popular device at the time, and are both technically fiction, although "The Coquette" is based on real-life events. The overarching message and intent of both works are similar; they are morality guides and educational warnings to promote what a proper, mindful, and upright American woman should strive for in life and in her role in society (and more directly, what to avoid). Surprisingly (to me), there's a certain sense of progressiveness that I was not expecting. "Progressive" for the time, that is, because there are still strong limitations and guardrails set in place for women. That later element was certainly not surprising to me. 21st Century readers will see that most obviously. The novels want to foster morally strong and learned American women for the new American republic, but there are clear limits. Educated, social, and well-read women are not outright shunned, but frivolous books (such as sentimental romances), vanity (too caught up in fashions), and impulsive behaviors (choosing the "wrong" company) are rebuffed. The two works try to show by example that overly independent women who make "bad" or "selfish" decisions are doomed to experience unintended, unhappy, and tragic consequences, which also spill over to their families and communities. The pervading principles of the late 18th Century demanded that a proud and content American woman knows her role (and place) in society and in the family. While there is some scorn cast upon the male characters who are loose with their morals, who are rakes and libertines, and they also receive some amount of "just deserts", it's really the women who are more in the crosshairs in these works.
"The Power of Sympathy" contains a plot twist towards the end, but really it's the drier and stiffer of the two pieces. Most readers today would find it hard to get through, mainly because of the writing style of the time and the epistolary genre, but also because it is more unabashedly didactic. But as an example of early Post-Colonial American fiction, it is historically relevant, representative, and necessary.
"The Coquette", written about a decade later, actually seems to make a great leap forward in readability (relatively speaking). It's more fun to read and feels noticeably closer to contemporary styles than "The Power of Sympathy" does. "The Coquette" is like a soap opera and we get to know the characters more personally; they come across more like us, people we might know, not stock archetypes. While it might also be a hard read for some readers today, I found it much more entertaining of the two. While it is also epistolary, the letters are fluid and often carefree. Offhand remarks, pauses, and distracted trains of thought abound like they would in texts and messaging apps today.
Those two works are the main components of this collection, but it’s the third element that really bumps this volume into the 5 Star realm for me. Carla Mulford’s Introduction might be a long one, and many readers will well-likely skip it or find it tedious, but it is excellent. I found it absolutely helpful to understand the context in which these two pieces were written and published. It’s an in-depth treatise that is well-written; I found it engaging and very readable. Mulford is clear and thorough; she delves into the details of the authors, other literary persons and works from the era, writing styles and devices in vogue at the time, and the American societal climate and mood. She covers all this to make "The Power of Sympathy" and "The Coquette" easier to grasp and internalize, and more natural. She is successful in that. Embarrassed to say, the late 18th Century American landscape is an age I simply know too little about. I really needed and appreciated that Introduction. It really helps that, although Mulford does not simplify; doesn’t skimp on details; and is scholarly, she does not get bogged down in the pedantic. Honestly, her Into is something I would read as a stand-alone paper.
This particular volume is not just for those with literary interests, but it can be an excellent addition for the American history buffs.
The two works are similarly epistolary, a popular device at the time, and are both technically fiction, although "The Coquette" is based on real-life events. The overarching message and intent of both works are similar; they are morality guides and educational warnings to promote what a proper, mindful, and upright American woman should strive for in life and in her role in society (and more directly, what to avoid). Surprisingly (to me), there's a certain sense of progressiveness that I was not expecting. "Progressive" for the time, that is, because there are still strong limitations and guardrails set in place for women. That later element was certainly not surprising to me. 21st Century readers will see that most obviously. The novels want to foster morally strong and learned American women for the new American republic, but there are clear limits. Educated, social, and well-read women are not outright shunned, but frivolous books (such as sentimental romances), vanity (too caught up in fashions), and impulsive behaviors (choosing the "wrong" company) are rebuffed. The two works try to show by example that overly independent women who make "bad" or "selfish" decisions are doomed to experience unintended, unhappy, and tragic consequences, which also spill over to their families and communities. The pervading principles of the late 18th Century demanded that a proud and content American woman knows her role (and place) in society and in the family. While there is some scorn cast upon the male characters who are loose with their morals, who are rakes and libertines, and they also receive some amount of "just deserts", it's really the women who are more in the crosshairs in these works.
"The Power of Sympathy" contains a plot twist towards the end, but really it's the drier and stiffer of the two pieces. Most readers today would find it hard to get through, mainly because of the writing style of the time and the epistolary genre, but also because it is more unabashedly didactic. But as an example of early Post-Colonial American fiction, it is historically relevant, representative, and necessary.
"The Coquette", written about a decade later, actually seems to make a great leap forward in readability (relatively speaking). It's more fun to read and feels noticeably closer to contemporary styles than "The Power of Sympathy" does. "The Coquette" is like a soap opera and we get to know the characters more personally; they come across more like us, people we might know, not stock archetypes. While it might also be a hard read for some readers today, I found it much more entertaining of the two. While it is also epistolary, the letters are fluid and often carefree. Offhand remarks, pauses, and distracted trains of thought abound like they would in texts and messaging apps today.
Those two works are the main components of this collection, but it’s the third element that really bumps this volume into the 5 Star realm for me. Carla Mulford’s Introduction might be a long one, and many readers will well-likely skip it or find it tedious, but it is excellent. I found it absolutely helpful to understand the context in which these two pieces were written and published. It’s an in-depth treatise that is well-written; I found it engaging and very readable. Mulford is clear and thorough; she delves into the details of the authors, other literary persons and works from the era, writing styles and devices in vogue at the time, and the American societal climate and mood. She covers all this to make "The Power of Sympathy" and "The Coquette" easier to grasp and internalize, and more natural. She is successful in that. Embarrassed to say, the late 18th Century American landscape is an age I simply know too little about. I really needed and appreciated that Introduction. It really helps that, although Mulford does not simplify; doesn’t skimp on details; and is scholarly, she does not get bogged down in the pedantic. Honestly, her Into is something I would read as a stand-alone paper.
This particular volume is not just for those with literary interests, but it can be an excellent addition for the American history buffs.
June 8, 2023
These two early American novels are more interesting for what they represent (in terms of literary history) than for what they actually achieve (as works of literature). Both are unashamedly didactic, with The Coquette taking a slightly more subtle approach than the megaphone moralizing of The Power of Sympathy, and both opt for a straightforward plot, although Brown does add one minor and one very major twist to his characters' pathetic-tragic path. The style of both novels is stilted even by eighteenth-century standards, and neither does much with the potential for psychological insight offered by the epistolary form: Foster's Eliza is a fairly complex character, although not a particularly likeable one, which works against rather than for the moral and sentimental success of her narrative, I felt. We are quite some way from the standard of Clarissa and Tom Jones here. For me, though, it is in the way that they are attempting to use British forms to address American concerns that most of the interest of these two books lies, clearly and thoroughly laid out by Carla Mulford in her excellent introduction to this volume, thereby earning it an extra star.
November 15, 2021
Here are two early American novels: William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette. Neither is on par with the literature coming out of Europe at that time, but both are fascinating as records of what Americans were reading in the early days of the nation. Both are epistolary novels, told entirely through letters. (This is not my favorite literary gimmick, but as Samuel Richardson’s monumental Clarissa, another epistolary novel, is on my “To Read” shelf, I guess I’d better get used to it!) Of the two, I much preferred The Coquette. With The Power of Sympathy, I never got a real sense of the characters from their letters.
Next, I’m continuing my dive into American literature from this period with the slightly later Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.
Next, I’m continuing my dive into American literature from this period with the slightly later Hope Leslie by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.
January 17, 2024
The Coquette is an awesome example of early American literature which is acutely feminist. Despite brief moments of overwhelming moralizing, the prose remains beautiful. And these moments of moralizing contribute much to understanding the work in its place. The twentieth letter in which Eliza Wharton writes to her mother is astonishing, and made me realize how rarely I read scenes of tenderness between mothers and daughters in literature.
May 1, 2023
I read this for The Power of Sympathy*
The narrative is dry and slow if not completely halted at times. The themes and ideas are presented bluntly. The story itself is occasionally bad instead of slow but in a sort of "so bad its good" sort of way. Not impossibly boring, it's pretty short, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Leave it to the American literature nerds to suffer through.
The narrative is dry and slow if not completely halted at times. The themes and ideas are presented bluntly. The story itself is occasionally bad instead of slow but in a sort of "so bad its good" sort of way. Not impossibly boring, it's pretty short, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Leave it to the American literature nerds to suffer through.
May 9, 2025
Read the coquette in January. Read power of sympathy in April. The coquette is easily, far better: 3.5/5 stars. Power of sympathy gets 2 stars.
Thank you Hannah Foster for “marriage is the tom of friendship” and “Heaven seldom leaves injured innocence unavenged!”
Thank you Hannah Foster for “marriage is the tom of friendship” and “Heaven seldom leaves injured innocence unavenged!”
August 16, 2019
It took me until a second reading to twig that The Power of Sympathy is anti-victim blaming. The Coquette was just awesome from the very first read.
March 29, 2021
Read for ENGL 3005W (only The Power of Sympathy)
Loved the drama but it was kind of a drag
Loved the drama but it was kind of a drag
June 7, 2024
Only read The Power of Sympathy. Unenticing story of seduction, adultery, suicide, and unwed mothers.
February 11, 2025
this book is ridiculous and one of the worst things i've ever read but also hilarious? i don't know. it's a mess and terrible but also fabulous.
April 14, 2026
i'm getting tired of the american female virtue trope but love the drama
April 18, 2026
Fascinating book, but disappointed with the ending.
January 9, 2023
The Power of Sympathy (2023.01.08)
January 15, 2026
American fiction #2
Originally published in 1789
American significance: this is considered the first American novel - written by someone born in what was then the Massachusetts Colony and published in the now independent American state of Massachusetts just two months before the Constitution was ratified and effected March 4, 1789.
Like many novels of the day, it is meant to be a didactic, moralizing work for the purpose of teaching women the dangers of seduction and falling prey to passion.
Originally published in 1789
American significance: this is considered the first American novel - written by someone born in what was then the Massachusetts Colony and published in the now independent American state of Massachusetts just two months before the Constitution was ratified and effected March 4, 1789.
Like many novels of the day, it is meant to be a didactic, moralizing work for the purpose of teaching women the dangers of seduction and falling prey to passion.
May 1, 2008
Oh my goodness! This book (The Power of Sympathy)is a series of letters from young man to young woman, dowager to maid, other young man to other young woman...back and forth...on and on...each letter unraveling the story and adding to the suspense...it is a classic...very different reading from modern novels. But it is fun and has a surprise ending. Again, a required book for a BYU lit. class I'm taking. Ergo...that's why I read it.
January 10, 2012
The Coquette is a really fascinating seduction narrative with a witty and complexly-drawn protagonist. Although it has a lot of the same predictable features that other texts of this genre have, I think Eliza is much more interesting and more sympathetic than some of her seduced sisters (although my students categorically disliked her). The epistolary style keeps the text moving and gives you a number of different insights into the culture of the period.
April 16, 2014
THE COQUETTE:
I liked this book, and at the same time it is, I believe, one of the most depressing stories I have ever read. I liked it in that the story was told through letters between the characters, relating the events to one another. While I enjoyed the format the story took, the story itself was depressing.
I liked this book, and at the same time it is, I believe, one of the most depressing stories I have ever read. I liked it in that the story was told through letters between the characters, relating the events to one another. While I enjoyed the format the story took, the story itself was depressing.
September 7, 2015
At times, it's themes are welcome and true, and then they get misogynistic. However, it is a welcome read in a rape culture that blames its victims rather than evil individuals who ruin. It also highlights that teaching women to avoid rape rather than teaching men not to rape is a 200-year-old idea. Other than Its early American ideals, it's a very compelling, yet depressing read.
April 22, 2010
"Intended to represent the specious causes, and to Expose the fatal CONSEQUENCES, of SEDUCTION; To inspire the Female Mind With a Principle of Self Complacency, and to Promote the Economy of Human Life"
February 5, 2015
I read these two early American novels, as well as The Last of The Mohicans for American literature classes. The experience of reading these has lead me to believe that American novelists before Hawthorne wrote nothing but tedious melodramatic tripe.
September 19, 2015
Two of the "first" American novels--seduction, flirting gone awry, possible incest, basically these are classic eighteenth-century goodies (but in much shorter and digestible versions than the novels coming from across the pond).
November 24, 2009
Classic sentimental/conduct epistolary fiction, including the first American novel ever (Brown's).
Read
February 7, 2010Nach 20 Seiten abgebrochen. Ich darf das zwar als Anglistik-Studentin eigentlich nicht sagen, aber ich hasse geschwollene Sprache.
August 19, 2010
"No man can read 50 boring EPISTOLARIES about some DOMESTIC STUFF in oldtimey TEXT" - ben frnaklin in he was in Cool hand luke
June 20, 2011
Dated, but interesting as one of the first American novels.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews